How to Learn Better & Create Your Best Future | Tim Ferriss

Andrew Huberman 0:00 Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. (instrumental music) I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today my guest is Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss is an author, a podcaster, an investor, and is known for having a near-supernatural ability to predict the future, which has allowed him to obtain success in a huge number of different endeavors. For instance, he is a five-time number one New York Times best-selling author. But, perhaps equally or more important to that, he's also exceptionally good at teaching people how to write, the entire process of writing and marketing a book. His books The 4-Hour Chef and The 4-Hour Body and The 4-Hour Workweek not only explain his own exploration of how to optimize and prioritize his time and learn particular skills, but he teaches you those skills as well. This is really what sets Tim apart. He is an exceptional learner and an exceptional teacher, and today you'll learn why that is, and, in a characteristic Tim Ferriss way, he explains the process in a way that you can apply it. He lists out, for instance, the specific questions that you should ask when approaching any endeavor in order to get the information that you want and to make the process of learning and getting better at something and achieving great success in something that much more likely. That ability that Tim has to identify the specific questions that one needs to ask and answer, and the specific action steps to take in order to achieve success, is really what I believe sets Tim apart from everyone else on the internet or on the bookshelf that's giving advice as to how to become good at something. Tim Ferriss is also dedicated to various philanthropic efforts, the most recent of which is the donation of several millions of his own dollars to research on psychedelics for the treatment of otherwise intractable psychiatric challenges, such as major depression, suicidal depression, eating disorders, and addiction. And he's also brought together other philanthropists, which has really galvanized the whole field of psychedelic research for the treatment of mental health, transforming it from what was recently kind of a fringe area of science to a mainstay that's actually funded not only by philanthropy but by the National Institutes of Health. So he's really transformed this entire scientific field into one that now is transforming the laws around psychedelics and is providing mental health treatment for people that would otherwise suffer. Today's discussion was a particularly meaningful one, because not only is Tim a pioneer in the world of podcasting, but it also marked the nine-year anniversary of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show. Now, as I mentioned earlier, Tim is known for being able to see around corners, or predict the future. He really does seem to be about five if not 10 years ahead of everybody else in thinking about tools for optimization in particular domains of life. And so we were very fortunate that during today's discussion, he shares with us his current creative endeavors and how he's thinking about and approaching those. And he also breaks down for us the process of how to think about and prioritize one's schedule, not just on the order of the day, not just on the order of the week, but really thinking about one's life as a journey and how to organize and go about that journey. So today's discussion will provide with you tremendous insight into who Tim Ferriss is and how that incredible mind of his works in order to do all the amazing things that he's done, and, of course, he teaches you how to do it. He will tell you the exact questions that you should ask and that you should answer, and how to step back and think about those questions and then prioritize so that you can decide how to best invest your time. I'm sure many of you are familiar with The Tim Ferriss Show. However, if you're not already subscribing to The Tim Ferriss Show, I highly recommend you do. I still go back and listen to early episodes of The Tim Ferriss Show, and I'm a weekly listener to the new episodes. We provide a link to The Tim Ferriss Show in the show note captions. Also in the show note captions, you'll find links to Tim's many New York Times best-selling books and a link to his excellent weekly

Andrew Huberman 4:08 blog. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost-to-consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui Nui Venison. Maui Nui Venison is the most nutrient-dense and delicious red meat available. I've talked before on this podcast about the key importance of striving to get one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And when one strives to do that, it's also important to maximize the quality protein-to-calorie ratio. In other words, you don't want to consume a lot of extra calories in order to get your quality protein. Maui Nui Venison, in having an extremely high-quality protein and nutrient-to-calorie ratio, allows you to do that very easily. And in addition to that, Maui Nui Venison is delicious. I particularly like their bone broth, which has an unmatched 25 grams of protein per 100 calories. I also love their ground venison and their venison steaks. All of them are absolutely delicious. If you'd like to try Maui Nui Venison, go to mauinuivenison.com/huberman and get 20% off your first order. Again, that's mauinuivenison.com/huberman to get 20% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, that is the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, but nothing you don't, which means no sugar. It's critical that we get electrolytes, because every cell of our body, but in particular our nerve cells, our neurons, rely on electrolytes in order to function properly. With LMNT, it's very easy to ingest the correct ratios of electrolytes. They come in these little packets. They're really delicious. You mix them up with anywhere from 8 to 16 to 32 ounces of fluid. I like mine pretty concentrated, so I'll drink a 16-ounce glass of water with LMNT in it when I first wake up. I'll also consume another one of those maybe 32 ounces with one packet when I exercise, and maybe another one if I happen to sweat a lot during exercise or if I was in the sauna and sweating a lot if it's a very hot day, et cetera. If you'd like to try LMNT, go to drinklmnt, that's L-M-N-T, .com/huberman to claim a free LMNT sample pack with your purchase. Again, that's drinklmnt, L-M-N-T,.com/huberman.Today's episode is also brought to us by Levels. Levels is a program that lets you see how different foods and activities impact your blood glucose levels, or blood sugar levels, as they're sometimes referred to. With Levels, you can see how the specific foods you eat, when you eat, and exercise, as well as any other activities impact your blood glucose and how those affect things like your energy level or your quality of sleep, or your level of clarity and focus for mental work, or your physical output for physical endeavors. I first started using Levels about a year ago as a way to understand how different foods and activities impact my blood glucose levels, and it's really impacted my entire schedule. In fact, I've shuffled a number of things around such that now I have more stable energy throughout the day. Yes, I eliminated one or two foods. Fortunately, they weren't my favorite foods. I've also added some new foods to my nutrition program that have allowed my blood sugar levels to s- remain much more steady throughout the day, and to achieve better sleep at night. Levels even provides a simple score after any meal you eat, so you can see how different foods affect you and develop a personalized nutrition program that's exactly right for you, and that's really what Levels e- is about. It's really about tailoring things to your specific needs. So if you're interested in learning more about Levels and trying a CGM yourself, go to levels.link/huberman. Right now, they're offering an additional two free months of membership. Again, that's levels.link/huberman. And now for my discussion with Tim Ferriss.

Andrew Huberman 7:43 Tim Ferriss.

Tim Ferriss 7:44 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 7:45 I am nothing short of thrilled to have you here. I've been reading your books, reading your blogs, listening to your podcast for a very long time, and in preparing for today, I was thinking, you know, who does Tim remind me of? 'Cause I knew you reminded me of somebody.

Tim Ferriss 8:04 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 8:04 But I didn't know who. And then I realized it, you remind me of the neurobiologist, Ramon y Cajal. You don't look anything like him. He doesn't look anything like you. Uh, he was a brilliant scientist. He won the Nobel Prize in 1906 for essentially describing the structure of the nervous system. He was the first, along with another guy, to define synapses, like this fundamental connection in the nervous system. But the reason that you remind me of Cajal is that it's a well-known, or not so secret secret in neuroscience, that if you want to pick a really excellent project to work on, you simply go and look at what Cajal talked about or hypothesized, and then you work on that.

Tim Ferriss 8:49 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 8:50 You know, he had this almost, um, supernatural ability to look at fixed stained tissue of the nervous system, much of it is incredibly beautiful, by the way, and think about how it worked when it, it was alive, and he's considered the greatest neurobiologist of all time, without question. And it's really this feature of being able to, like, see around corners or into the future that establishes that link for me. It's, it's absolute truth that if you look back to what you were doing 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the kinds of things you were doing, the kinds of questions you were asking, that translates to much of what people like myself and people in the fitness space, tech space, investor space, mindfulness space, psychedelic space, all these different arenas, what they're doing now.

Tim Ferriss 9:40 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 9:41 So, um, it's not hyperbole to say that you are the Ramon y Cajal of all those different spaces, and podcasting, of course, uh, is one of those. So I owe you a great debt of gratitude, and many others do as well. So my first question for you is, what was your mindset around the time that you wrote 4-Hour Body, 4-Hour Workweek, but in particular 4-Hour Body? Because the protocols in that book are s- so very useful. They were at the time it was published, they still are now, and so many of the things like ice baths, the discussion around brown fat thermogenesis, um, resistance training in its, uh, you know, kind of basic form of just providing pr- enough progressive overload to get an adaptation, not excessively long workouts, weight loss, low carb diet, um, and on and on and on. W- what were you thinking at that time? Like, w- what... If you can think back to then, like, what, what were you foraging for? Uh, what were you thinking about when you woke up in the morning? Thinking, oh, I'm going to go find all this stuff that at the time was really esoteric.

Tim Ferriss 10:47 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 10:47 'Cause it has all played out very well. Um, what I'm basically saying is, if you want to know what's going to be happening hot and useful in 5 years, 10 years and onwards, just look at what Tim's doing at any moment. So there it is.

Tim Ferriss 11:03 (laughs) Well, thank you for the very generous comparison and intro. I'm thrilled to be here, so thanks for having me. And the 4-Hour Body represented an opportunity for me to do a few things. The first was to diversify my identity from outside of the realm of the, say, business category. So it was a deliberate move. Since the success of the first book, book bought me permission to do something else that publishers would still want to gamble on. I wanted to see if I could maybe, like a Michael Lewis, take my audience with me to other topics. So that was a lateral move that was very deliberate from a, a career optionality standpoint. And then I was doing I think what I've done for a very long time and what I enjoy doing, which is looking at the most prevalent beliefs and maybe dogmatic assumptions in a given field. Could be anything. If anyone says always, never, should, I pay attention and take note of that. They may very well be right. But if anything is said in absolutes, I like to stress test, and in the case of say physical performance or physical manipulation, tracking, 2008, 2009 was a very interesting time because a number of different technologies were coming online, meaning.... being adopted by small groups, you had the very early stages of, say, accelerometers as wearables. You had a number of different innovations and means of tracking that had never been available f- before. You had, for instance, and this took a b- a ferreting on my side, it wasn't immediately on the roadmap for The 4-Hour Body, but continuous glucose monitors. At the time, that was, I wanna say, ex- exclusively limited to type 1 diabetics, or maybe type 2 diabetics, but largely type 1 diabetics. And what captured my interest, and I can't recall how I came across it, but it was probably through the very earliest iterations of what later became the quantified self-movement. And I remember attending the very first gathering at Kevin Kelly's house in Pacifica, California. This was, this was around 2009, 12 people, 13 people, to discuss quantifying health. But the, the example of a professional racecar driver, I can't remember the, the form factor, whether it was F1 or NASCAR or other, who was using this continual glucose monitor for paying attention to glucose levels while driving. And I thought to myself, would that not be useful for healthy normals? Would that not have other applications? 'Cause if this, if this is being used by a high performer in this type of context, might it have other types of applications? Which then led me to use the very early (laughs) versions of Dexcom, which were really painful to implant. No longer the case. Of course, that's changed a lot. And I wanted to see how I might be able to find a handful of different categories of things. There's the new, like the genuinely new, like CGM at that point was genuinely new. The very old that might have some room for scientific investigation, and I would say, when I say scientific, I don't necessarily mean randomized control trials at a university. I do think, as an N of one, if you think about study design, and you can even blind, you could even placebo control, and I knew people in the small subculture of quantified self who did this. You can, I think, approach things in a methodical way where you can make a lot of progress in trying to determine causality or, or lack thereof. Looking at very old things, looking at orphaned things, so for instance, there are many examples in the world of doping where you have, say, BALCO back in the day, where famously, Barry Bonds and others purportedly used things like the cream and the clear, and these were based on anabolics that were sourced from Soviet literature or older literature from the '50s and '60s, that might not be on the radar of, say, the anti-doping, uh, groups that would administer the testing. So

Tim Ferriss 15:22 all of these different buckets were of interest to me, and I begin where I usually do, which is interviewing folks. So I would interview one or two people in a given field, and I might ask them any number of questions. So one is, what are the nerds doing on the weekends or at night? This is also really good for investing. It's like, all right, what are the really technical nerds doing at night or on the weekends after they've put in a really long workday or workweek? Let's take a really close look at that. Another one is, and I'll, I'll create a flow for this, but what are rich people doing now that everyone or tens or hundreds of millions of people might be doing 10 years from now? And an example of that would be, let's just say full-time assistant, virtual assistant, AI, right? So we've seen the needs and wants being addressed by different technology, but it's an iteration of the same thing on some level. In the case of, say, using ChatGPT tied into Zapier for various functions. And then where are people cobbling together awkward solutions? So where are people piecing together awkward solutions, and is there room for some type of innovation there? These are a few of the questions that I would not only ask myself, but ask experts in different areas. So if I end up spending time, say, this was a few years prior to writing The 4-Hour Body, I spent time at NASA Ames and was interacting with a number of scientists, some people who were working on all sorts of biological tests and looking at genomics, and had a very frank discussion about where they thought if they had to push, right? So I'll ask questions like, "Push a little bit into the realm of science fiction and speculation, because I'm sure you can't support any type of projection like that with the literature, with scientific literature, but what do you think some of the risks are of, say, publishing your genome?" 'Cause at the time a number of high profile folks had just made their full genomes available, and they're like, "Well, I think in the near future it would be possible to reconstruct someone's face based on their genetic data." And they're like, "High degree of confidence." Like, "0 to 100%, how confident are they?" "Yeah, 80, 90%." I'm like, "Okay, I should pay attention to that, because if you're making your data available, let's just say, and it's anonymized per se, you still might be identifiable." So it's like, okay, that raises some interesting questions. Like, okay, well then how might you get around that? How might you put in safeguards so that you are the one and only keeper of your data, so to speak? Uh, brought up all sorts of targeted weaponry, uh, bi- sort of bio-weapons possibilities that I was interested in. And then I would ask that person who's clearly, like, willing to step outside of the box of whatever he's working on day to day, "Who are two of your close friends or two thinkers you really pay a lot of attention to who are kind of at the bleeding edge of something and unorthodox?" And then I would just continue to have these conversations over and over again. And the, the, the-... the s- the stream of development that I paid a lot of attention to is something along the lines of the following. So, th- the- the- the very beginnings are usually in some type of extreme case, and I think the extremes ... and this goes for product design as well but the extremes inform the mean, but not vice versa. So you can actually learn a lot by studying the edge cases. So, race horses, for instance. Uh, you'll often see things start with, say, race horses, uh, or people with wasting diseases, for instance, or any type of chronic or terminal illness who are willing to try some more experimental interventions. Then, let's just take one step further, body building. See a lot of interesting behavior in body building and high-level athletes, then billionaires, then rich people, then the rest of us, right? So my assumption is and was for The 4-Hour Body that along the lines of William Gibson's quote, you know, "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." So I'm never predicting the future. I'm just finding the seeds that are germinating that I think are going to bloom and end up spreading really, really widely. Uh, so that's- that's- that's generally where I start, and I assume the practitioners are going to be ahead of the papers. So studying, say, the coaches whose jobs are on the line, who are getting paid based on athlete performance, and assuming that a lot of that will eventually, if it holds up, make its way into, say, the peer-reviewed exercise science papers, but it's going to have a lag time of three to five years.

Andrew Huberman 19:58 At least.

Tim Ferriss 19:59 At least.

Andrew Huberman 20:00 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 20:00 At least.

Andrew Huberman 20:00 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 20:00 Takes a long time.

Andrew Huberman 20:01 Yeah, science is often very slow to catch up.

Tim Ferriss 20:04 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:05 Um,

Andrew Huberman 20:06 you mentioned many things I have questions about. Um, you mentioned paying attention to the new, the very old, or the orphaned.

Tim Ferriss 20:14 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:14 Um, so interesting, and I just thought I'd, uh, tell you that when you sit down with a graduate student or a post-doc, and they're trying to f- come up with a project, uh, rarely do you say, you know, like, "What do you want to work on?" And they fire back, like, a really interesting question. Sometimes they do, but that's the rare person. More often than not, you'll send them to the literature, and they'll come back with, like, "Okay, there's this new technique that we can use to answer a set of questions better than ever before," or, "There's a very old theory I want to revisit," or, "There's this theory that no one pays attention to."

Tim Ferriss 20:49 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:49 In fact, we had one guest on here, Oded Rechavi, who is studying the, essentially, um, inheritance of traits, transgenerational inheritance of traits. It's a little bit, although different from Lamarckian ...

Tim Ferriss 20:59 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:59 ... uh, uh, evolution, but it's a lot like that (laughs) um, in some ways. And, you know, these orphan theories that everyone assumed were wrong and that there is a basis for them. So, I think there's real genius in that, uh, analysis.

Tim Ferriss 21:13 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 21:14 Um, it also struck me as you were, um, listing off some of your process circa the- the writing of The 4-Hour Body, that I and many other people are- are probably curious about what the operations around all that looked like. So are you, (clears throat) or were you at the time, like, waking up in the morning going, "Okay, I'm gonna take a walk and think about the new, the old, and the orphaned," or, um, (clears throat) "I'm gonna take a walk or sit in a chair and think about, like, what are the nerds doing right now? What are rich people doing right now?" And cobbling together awkward solutions.

Tim Ferriss 21:45 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 21:45 Was- was that exploration a structured practice for you? Or is this just something that, um, was the consequence of being Tim Ferriss waking up in the morning and just, like, leaning into that?

Tim Ferriss 21:56 (laughs) Yeah, totally.

Andrew Huberman 21:56 Because I- I've experienced both, right?

Tim Ferriss 21:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 21:58 You know, but I think a lot of us are, uh, curious. I mean, th- there's a lot of mystique around you.

Tim Ferriss 22:04 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:05 Um, whether you like it.

Tim Ferriss 22:06 I'll do my best to dispel it. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:07 Whether- whether you like it or not. Um, it- it- i- i- it's there, and, um, and we're not trying to- to pry, but ...

Tim Ferriss 22:14 Pry away. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:15 Is the- is the establishment of structure for you something that's the consequence of structure in the first place? It's like, "Okay, now it's time to think."

Tim Ferriss 22:24 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 22:25 Or do you just allow things to geyser up to the surface?

Tim Ferriss 22:29 I do both, and I would say that in the case of The 4-Hour Body, it's- it's a bit of an anomaly compared to my later books because I had recorded effectively every workout I'd done since age 16 as a competitive athlete. I just- I had a lot of records, and I kept copious notes on supplement use and everything imaginable. So I have what you might call hypergraphia. I just capture almost everything in writing. And that was very useful because at various points in time, let's just say I looked at a photograph of myself from, making this up, but 2004 and- and I think, "I would like to look and feel like that again. Okay, let me revisit my workout logs. Let me just replicate the preceding three to six months of workouts and look at my intake and my diet at the time." And lo and behold, more or less, I could replicate the same type of look and feel and performance. So I had a lot already logged that I thought was worth examining and putting under scrutiny, trying to replicate with other people. I do think replication is really important. And then when it came time to commit to writing the book, I thought about what types of mini books would be of great interest to me personally, and that book, like many of my other books, was written in such a fashion that it could be a choose-your-own-adventure book. Did not need to be read. In fact, in many ways, it shouldn't be read linearly from page one to the end. You get to pick and choose which chapters are of interest based on breath hold, vertical jump, endurance, hypertrophy, cold exposure for fat loss, whatever it might be. And then I began talking to people, and at the- at the very outer bounds of self-experimentation, at least in the Bay Area, it's a pretty small community. So you're one or two lily pads from just about everyone, and it's not accidental that I put myself in that environment in San Francisco specifically...... and more generally in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, because there's just a high service area for luck to stick to, because you have so many serendipitous encounters. You have so many people focusing on different disciplines. That, I think, was the fertilizer and the fertile ground for everything else, was actually the choosing the where of writing, physically being located in San Francisco. And then when I'm structuring things, maybe I'll get into some of the nitty-gritty, but I was using at the time, and I still like to use, a program called Scrivener, which is actually designed predominantly for screenwriting. It's used for many things now, novels and so on. It's expanded its reach quite a bit. But it allows you to gather research and all of your documents and drafts, so that you can move them around in very novel ways, so that you can view, say, a split pane of your research and what you're working on simultaneously, without having to toggle between a lot of different windows. And I was very promiscuous in my gathering of data. So I would gather from, say, the web using a web clipper from Evernote, which I was involved with as a company, and basically without bias, capture as much as possible, put three asterisks next to anything that I thought I really might want to revisit after I'd read something a second time, which I would always do. Then I could Control-F to find just three asterisks, because they don't occur much in normal writing, just like people, authors, writers will u- t- use TK, meaning find such-and-such a date. Data needs to be inserted later, but I- I don't want to interrupt the flow of writing, only put in TK because it doesn't really appear in natural English much. Uh, in terms of structured thinking, the way I approached it was, during that period of time in my life, it was interviews, tracking people down, conversations, emails, reading, so ingestion, let's just say, for the workday, then a break for training, and- and actually using myself as the human guinea pig for various things that had surfaced that might be on the docket.

Andrew Huberman 26:42 Where were you training at that time?

Tim Ferriss 26:43 I-

Andrew Huberman 26:43 San Francisco is not, uh, famous for amazing gyms. (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 26:46 It's not famous for amazing gyms. At the time, I was training mostly at a climbing gym called Mission Cliffs.

Andrew Huberman 26:53 Oh, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 26:53 They didn't have much, but they had barbells.

Andrew Huberman 26:54 Yeah, I know of that place.

Tim Ferriss 26:54 And they had-

Andrew Huberman 26:55 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 26:55 And they had kettlebells.

Andrew Huberman 26:56 Yep.

Tim Ferriss 26:57 I also had, in the- in the walkway leading from the front door of the apartment I was r- renting, it was more of a house, the front door all the way to the first set of stairs, there were 30 kettle- kettlebells of various types. And I was training for certification, 'cause I wanted to put myself on some type of deadline with accountability for that type of training to get a better understanding of it. So I'd train for a few hours. I also had developed a friendship with Kelly Starrett, so San Francisco CrossFit, who I have tremendous amount of respect for-

Andrew Huberman 27:26 Yeah, likewise.

Tim Ferriss 27:27 ... on multiple levels.

Andrew Huberman 27:27 He's terrific. And his new book, uh-

Tim Ferriss 27:30 Yeah, Built to Move.

Andrew Huberman 27:31 ... is a great book.

Tim Ferriss 27:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 27:32 He's so good.

Tim Ferriss 27:33 Yeah. He- he really not only talks the talk, but walks the walk and exemplifies many of the capabilities that he teaches, which I take seriously. I like practitioners.

Andrew Huberman 27:44 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 27:45 Not just the people with pretty theories. Although the theories are important, I prefer to see someone who can actually put them into practice. So Kelly served that function, uh, certainly, and I'm- we're still very close friends. And

Tim Ferriss 27:58 then after that, all right, shake off the cobwebs, (laughs) get the body moving, get the brain moving also, eat, and then I would actually focus on synthesis. So I would write generally from, let's call it 9:00 PM or 10:00 PM through to 4:00 or 5:00 AM, and I would ride the wave if I happened to be in the zone. If I weren't in the zone, I wouldn't force it, and I would try to get more sleep. But I have always performed best with my writing in those witching hours of, let's call it 10:00 PM to 4:00 AM. And my experience is that the writers I've interviewed, the- the writer friends I've become close with, if you look at when they made themselves, not what- necessarily what they do now, right, but what they did that eventually got them to escape velocity, they're almost always doing most of their writing very late at night or very early in the morning when the rest of the world or their social group is inactive.

Andrew Huberman 29:01 Wow.

Tim Ferriss 29:02 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 29:02 And I say wow because, uh, of course all of this was prior to the publication of Matt Walker's-

Tim Ferriss 29:08 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 29:08 ... seminal book, Right? Why We Sleep.

Tim Ferriss 29:10 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 29:10 Which I really see as the book that shifted a lot of people, fortunately, from the "I'll sleep when I'm dead" mindset-

Tim Ferriss 29:17 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 29:18 ... uh, to, uh, you know, to really paying attention to it. And um, you know, I don't think Matt gets enough credit. I mean, there, uh, there's been a revision of a few points within that book, but the majority of it is just spot on and, um-

Tim Ferriss 29:29 Yeah, hyper-legitimate.

Andrew Huberman 29:31 ... so good. And, um, and yet what you're describing is a schedule that, you know, starting to write at 9:00 PM and finishing up around 4:00 AM, but you talked about research earlier that day and training and eating.

Tim Ferriss 29:41 Then I would sleep.

Andrew Huberman 29:41 So were there naps in there?

Tim Ferriss 29:42 I would sleep from say 4:00 to maybe 11:00 or 12:00. So I would be getting up later.

Andrew Huberman 29:49 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 29:49 And I've had conversations with Matt about this, and there are night owls and morning larks, right?

Andrew Huberman 29:58 Yeah, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 29:59 And there are certainly differences in the code, meaning the genetics, but that worked very, very well for me for a very long time. It is, however, a very challenging social schedule, so once you have a significant other, and every girlfriend I've ever had is (laughs) a morning person, if you want to spend time together, that schedule just does not work. So I made compromises later-

30:24 ... for the social side of things. But if, if you put a gun to my head and said, "You need to write the best book humanly possible, that is your only priority outside of some exercise and fuel," I would follow the same schedule.

Andrew Huberman 30:35 I know several, um, very successful podcasters, Lex Fridman, in particular, who, I think he's trying to follow a more normal schedule now, but he's pseudo-nocturnal, at least by my ex- my read.

Tim Ferriss 30:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:47 Um, and there are a couple other, uh, online content, uh, creators, um, Derek from More Plates More Dates, who's hyper-productive in his domain-

Tim Ferriss 30:55 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:56 ... and is mostly nocturnal.

Tim Ferriss 30:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:58 Um, and then as you're describing your, uh, writing routine and your overall routine, I was thinking that, you know, the, the great skateboarder, everyone knows Tony Hawk, who is obviously a great skateboarder, no doubt about that, but Rodney Mullen, who invented the ollie on street, the kick flip, the ollie, like, Rodney's basically nocturnal-

Tim Ferriss 31:15 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 31:16 ... and has been for a long time, and would, you know, skateboard up and down the boardwalk in Santa Monica in the middle of the night because lack of distraction-

Tim Ferriss 31:22 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 31:22 ... is really was, and he's been doing that since his teens.

Tim Ferriss 31:24 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 31:24 I don't know what he's doing these days, but I think a lot of creators just need space, and, and-

Tim Ferriss 31:30 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 31:30 ... I always wonder if that's because when they, at least the ones that are not, uh, socially dysfunctional, like yourself, who, uh, when they are around people there's this almost, hopefully a desire to interact, so you almost have to remove the stimulus completely.

Tim Ferriss 31:46 Yeah. Yeah, it, it, it removes the plausible deniability, which might not be the perfect use of that phrase, but in the sense that you c- it's harder to fool yourself into thinking you're doing something important when you're checking your messages or social media at 2:00 in the morning. Who are we kidding, folks? You should be writing in this case, right?

Andrew Huberman 32:05 Right.

Tim Ferriss 32:05 And writers will do anything to avoid writing. I remember, uh, Ayn Rand wrote a book about writing, which is actually fantastic. I can't remember the exact title. It might just be On Nonfiction Writing, something like that. And she talked about polishing the sneakers or the shoes before writing, like, "I really just need to do this one thing, which is to just clean up that shoe, because somebody should really clean it up, and at some point I should clean it up, and therefore, why don't I just do, there's no time like the present, I'll just do that," and it's all to avoid writing, which is the harder thing.

Andrew Huberman 32:32 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 32:33 And in my conversations with Matt also, I should say that... as someone who has self-described as a person who struggles with onset insomnia, Matt made the point, mmm, sometimes we need to relearn things, maybe you should just go to bed later. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 32:49 Mm-hmm. Sure.

Tim Ferriss 32:51 And that might address some of this onset insomnia, and I don't know the causes for that, but I do get a second wind very late, could be related to some cortisol release abnormality or just different scripting in my system, who knows?

Tim Ferriss 33:06 I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important. It's populated by gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health. And those probiotics in Athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health. In addition, Athletic Greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins, and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met, and it tastes great. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman, and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, et cetera, and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D3 K2.

Tim Ferriss 34:21 I'll mention one other, one other maybe shuristic that I use for trying to peek around corners, which is, if I find an example of an outlier, trying to find two or three, right? Because one is an exception, two is interesting, three is worth investigating. That's sort of how I think about it. And I recognize (soft music) the plural of anecdote does not equal data. However, a lot of interesting discoveries begin as case studies or case histories.

Andrew Huberman 34:52 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 34:52 And so there are some things we could talk about that, that I've paid attention to over the last few years that are not in The 4-Hour Body that I think are quite interesting and raise very, very exciting questions. Uh, but-

Andrew Huberman 35:05 I'd love to hear about those.

Tim Ferriss 35:06 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:06 Yeah. And a- and along the lines of what I call anecdata-

Tim Ferriss 35:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:09 ... I mean, most of what we know about human memory stems from one patient, HM, who had his hippocampi-

Tim Ferriss 35:16 Interesting.

Andrew Huberman 35:16 ... removed for, uh, epilepsy-

Tim Ferriss 35:18 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:18 ... and, of course, there have been millions probably, close to millions of studies in animals and humans focusing on the hippocampi, but, uh, most of what we know about human memory is from one guy.

Tim Ferriss 35:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:28 You know?

Tim Ferriss 35:29 Yeah, exactly. So, there's, there's, there's a lot to be examined. Not all of it will get funding for RCTs, let's be realistic. This is especially true if you're hoping for any type of directive data. And notice I'm not saying conclusive, but if, if you are a human who's going to be making decisions about diet, health, exercise, if you want any consensus, you're doomed. You'll be (laughs) you're not going to get any answers before you die. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 35:54 Can you say that twice-

Tim Ferriss 35:55 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 35:55 ... so that the internet can hear it extra loud and clear?

Tim Ferriss 35:57 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:57 For those of you that are arguing about nutrition on Twitter, like, it, it might actually be life wasted.

Tim Ferriss 36:04 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:05 I mean, I'm not being judgmental. I mean, I think that there's validity in lots of those pockets. There's stuff that's wrong in lots of those pockets.

Tim Ferriss 36:12 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:12 Um, there are diets that work extremely well, like, you know, 4-Hour Diet.

Tim Ferriss 36:17 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:17 Or slow carb. I always call it the 4-Hour Diet, but-

Tim Ferriss 36:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 36:19 ... the slow carb diet.

Tim Ferriss 36:20 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:21 It works extremely well.

Tim Ferriss 36:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:21 Any time I've followed it, you know, I get much leaner and stronger and all that stuff, um-

Tim Ferriss 36:26 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:27 ... uh, that it's, uh, purported to do, it, it works. Um, but yeah, maybe you could just, uh, explain what you mean by that, because I think there are some, uh, argument/friction spaces-

Tim Ferriss 36:38 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:38 ... that are, that are truly an energy sink.

Tim Ferriss 36:41 Yeah.

36:42 I would just say, focus on what works for you and your family or your team. And if you're arguing on the internet, recognize that you're just doing it because you like arguing on the internet. You're not going to convince anyone of anything, and uh, (laughs) you're just gonna make yourself, uh, more frustrated if you plan on changing any opinions. So for me, it's live and let live, and, uh, the more people who engage in that type of behavior, the more competitive advantage do you have if you don't. So for me, I'm like, "Okay, if you want to spend this vital (laughs) non-renewable resource of yours called time on that, if I ever compete against you, I'm going to win. So great, I'll just, uh, I- I'll also not even try to convince you to stop doing that unless you see the logic in it," which I have, which is why I also don't have, at least for two years, have mostly had no social apps installed on my phone. Uh, a- and we could talk about that, because I think recognizing that these things have been engineered to overcome any type of self-discipline with billions of dollars (laughs) at stake should lead you to believe that you're bringing a, a knife to a gunfight. So I just don't have the apps on my phone to begin with, and I find it much more gratifying to see disproportionate change from small inputs. So that's what I'm looking for, and uh, I'm also looking for changes that are easy to make that can have high adherence, that have very limited downside, which is very different from proving something. For instance, in The 4-Hour Body, took a look at the potential effect of cell phones or the proximity of cell phones to, say, gonadal function and reproductive health, and the literature that was available at the time was very limited. Had some animal studies, mice, rats, et cetera. I recognize humans are not just large mice, so they don't always translate, but I looked at it and I said, "Okay, looking at this simplistically, is it plausible that there could be similar effects on humans?" Seems to be the case, also based on conversations with people who are specialists but would never go on record. Therefore, if your phone is in your pocket, just have it on airplane mode.

Andrew Huberman 39:04 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 39:04 I mean, it, it does not have a high cost. And, and then pending any revision, we can see, but while the jury's still out, I'm going to risk mitigate by taking this step.

Andrew Huberman 39:18 Yeah. Well, and I just want to say, uh, thank you there too. I read that recommendation. I followed the recommendation of not keeping the phone on in my front pocket or back pocket. Um, again, that's anecdata.

Tim Ferriss 39:31 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 39:31 Um, my sperm analysis isn't relevant to this conversation (laughs) but worked out.

Tim Ferriss 39:37 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 39:37 But y- you know, you could say, "Well, that's not b- necessarily because you had the phone off," but, um, I did a very long detailed episode on male and female fertility.

Tim Ferriss 39:44 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 39:45 There is now a, what I view as a really quality meta-analysis, and it's pretty clear that there are effects of the smartphone on, proximity of the smartphone when it's turned on, uh, that are not good for sperm, isn't necessarily going to render somebody sterile, but, um, on sperm, uh, that can be separated out from the heat effects.

Tim Ferriss 40:07 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 40:07 And so essentially this is another instance in which, uh, you were, you were right. Um, and-

Tim Ferriss 40:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:13 ... I think more data will come out, and am I a EMF conspiracy theorist? Uh, no. Um, do I wear tinfoil underwear? No.

Tim Ferriss 40:20 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 40:21 Um, (laughs) but, uh, I think it's interesting.

Tim Ferriss 40:24 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 40:24 I think it's important, and, uh, thanks to you, um, it cued my attention to it. In fact, I, uh, teach about that in a, uh, course on, on neural circuits and biology and health and disease.

Tim Ferriss 40:35 Amazing.

Andrew Huberman 40:36 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 40:37 And I don't expect to get everything right at all. Uh, that would be crazy. (laughs) I'd like to think I'm not totally crazy, and it's very important if you are going to do self-experimentation or experimentation in small groups, which the quantified self-community did quite well and I think still does quite well, you should really make every effort to not fool yourself, which-

Andrew Huberman 41:03 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 41:04 ... is hard. It's, it's challenging at times, but read books like Bad Science. Read books like How to Lie with Statistics. Ensure that you are able to read studies well. You don't have to be the best in the world, but that you can, on some level, identify the strengths and weaknesses of studies. This doesn't take a long time. Certainly our friend, uh, Peter Attia, Dr. Peter Attia has Studying the Studies, which is a multiple part blog series dedicated to this. There are other ways to approach it. I took one of his podcasts, republished it on The Tim Ferriss Show because it talked about how to examine studies, what powering refers to, things like this. In the span of one or two weeks, you could really become literate with the f- building blocks of scientific literacy with respect to reading studies, and that gives you such an enormous life advantage. It's hard to overstate.

Andrew Huberman 41:58 Yeah, I agree, and I also think that there are a lot of things that just simply will not ever be explored in a randomized control trial.

Tim Ferriss 42:04 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:05 Um, one of the things that Peter and I have talked about before is, uh, he texts me, you know, "What are your thoughts on BPC-157?" This is a gastric peptide that's now been synthesized, so people will inject it into a tissue that they're trying to heal or improve. Lots and lots of anecdata on BPC-157, making injuries heal faster, et cetera.

Tim Ferriss 42:24 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:24 Again, anecdata.

Tim Ferriss 42:25 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 42:26 I've used it. I took an injection of it yesterday, in fact. Um... Peter basically is not a believer-

Tim Ferriss 42:35 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:35 ... because there is a lack of published data on this, which is perfectly fine. Or I should say he's, um, skeptical.

Tim Ferriss 42:41 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:42 Um, and so there's always that possibility of a placebo effect.

Tim Ferriss 42:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 42:45 But I don't think there will ever be a really nice controlled...... trial on BPC 157 because the financial incentives aren't there.

Tim Ferriss 42:52 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 42:53 And no smart graduate student is going to go do a thesis on this. That, so that's the reality. I mean, maybe one will do it now that we're having this conversation, but it just doesn't... The, the payout isn't there.

Tim Ferriss 43:03 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:04 So-

Tim Ferriss 43:04 And that last one you mentioned is one that people miss a lot. People doing these studies are people with careers, who are planning their careers.

Andrew Huberman 43:11 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 43:11 And so they choose what they're going to invest time in very carefully. So that's another limiter on what will end up in our RCT-

Andrew Huberman 43:19 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 43:19 ... or not, right? So, uh, I think that's good for people to hear. And as you get more involved with science, uh, and in my case, through a foundation, you know, ƒciSai Foundation, funding a lot of early stage science, you realize how expensive it is and how long it takes. It is a long-term investment, and if you are looking to make behavioral changes or modify aspects of yourself, cognitive, physical, psycho-emotional or otherwise, identifying interventions, right, options that seem to have some plausible upside, like there is a, a mechanism that might make sense in humans, if you feel fairly certain there's very limited downside, which should include talking to people who are presenting their results as anecdata.

Andrew Huberman 44:09 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 44:10 Then maybe you consider using X, if you can cap your downside, right? And I recall, for instance, looking at trans-resveratrol specifically, not for longevity, but in potentially increasing endurance for 4-Hour Body. And I ended up testing it, and there's a funny story associated with that, didn't quite work out as planned, and I don't use it any longer, but what I experienced prior to actually finding this on forums was joint pain, elbow pain. The one most consistent side effect was what felt like tendinosis in the elbows. And then I went online, and I'd already done this, but I hadn't come across, I think it was the 500 group. People had been using 500 milligrams of trans-resveratrol daily for long periods of time, and one of the most common reported side effects was joint pain. And I was like, "Okay, I'm not willing to make that trade-off." (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 45:06 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 45:07 And, uh-

Andrew Huberman 45:09 Makes sense to me.

Tim Ferriss 45:10 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 45:11 I think, um, it would be fun if ever you were willing, that we could do, uh, a hybrid podcast on supplement fails.

Tim Ferriss 45:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 45:21 (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 45:21 I have some spectacular failures.

Andrew Huberman 45:22 As do I.

Tim Ferriss 45:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 45:23 And I'm thinking, I'm thinking about a few of them. I mean, some that were really, um, like took me off course. Like there's one supplement, uh, called bulbine natalensis. This is ano- another one of these shrubs.

Tim Ferriss 45:35 S- sounds like an infection. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 45:36 I mean, this thing will really spike your testosterone and free testosterone. I'm talking back acne, like huge strength gains, aggression.

Tim Ferriss 45:44 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 45:44 It's really wild. And then after about 7 to 10 days, it all crashes and you go below baseline.

Tim Ferriss 45:52 Oh, sounds terrible.

Andrew Huberman 45:52 Or yeah, even testicular pain, so it was unclear.

Tim Ferriss 45:54 Oh, oh.

Andrew Huberman 45:54 So y- you, if you're a smart person, you halt use, right?

Tim Ferriss 45:58 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 45:58 So I can understand why people are skeptical of certain things, and then of course there are supplements that I'm a big fan of and that you're a big fan of. We talked about those things elsewhere. But, um, it might be fun to do a supplement fails podcast.

Tim Ferriss 46:09 Oh, I could, I-

Andrew Huberman 46:09 If ever you were willing, that would be-

Tim Ferriss 46:10 Oh, I could do just experimental fails.

Andrew Huberman 46:12 Oh, yeah.

Tim Ferriss 46:13 Yeah, N of 1 experimental fails.

Andrew Huberman 46:14 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 46:15 Which include things that people might not think about. For instance, 4-Hour Body had quite a bit of real estate dedicated to looking at things like PRP.

Andrew Huberman 46:25 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 46:25 So platelet rich plasma, I think there's a role for it. It's not useful for everything, but for certain types of injury or repair, I think it's very interesting. Uh, but, uh, every time you get injected, this is where you have to be careful because there are very few free lunches out there. There's, there's usually some type of feedback loop (laughs) . Your system is very smart at auto-regulating things. This is, this is outside of that, a consideration that I hadn't made, which is every time you have an injection, there's a chance of an infection, particularly if the site, in my case was the elbow, and th- the injection was made for the PRP not quite where it should have been, slightly to the rear of the elbow where the s- the skin is very thick. And so it pushed, uh, staph bacteria...

Andrew Huberman 47:17 Oh.

Tim Ferriss 47:17 ... from a mid layer of the skin into the joint capsule.

Andrew Huberman 47:19 Not good.

Tim Ferriss 47:20 And that really could have ended very poorly. I ended up having to go to the ER and get it ou- get it all removed and so on. But that could have ended up, uh, in a, in a much, much more severe (laughs) situation. So you do have to be careful with this stuff. I've become a little more conservative with-

Andrew Huberman 47:37 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 47:38 ... some of what I do-

Andrew Huberman 47:38 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 47:39 ... including injections. I'm like, "All right," like, "let me think twice about the injections." If I'm gonna swallow something, "Let me make sure I'm really looking at the implications for the liver."

Andrew Huberman 47:49 Yeah. Smart, very smart. I'm curious about some of the things that you talked about in The 4-Hour Body and that you've mentioned today, things like accelerometers, continuous glucose monitors, deliberate cold exposure. How many of those things are you still doing on a regular basis?

Tim Ferriss 48:07 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 48:08 And how many do you, um, you know, use a couple times a week or a couple times a month or go through phases of using and not using?

Tim Ferriss 48:15 Cold exposure I use as consistently as is practical. So if I'm traveling, it's a little harder, but we're in LA right now, one of the first things I did was find a few options for contrast therapy.

Andrew Huberman 48:26 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 48:26 One of the first things I did. And c- by contrast, I do not mean infrared sauna and cold plunge. I'd much rather have hot and cold water, just in terms of sort of speed of heating.

Andrew Huberman 48:39 The Japanese approach.

Tim Ferriss 48:40 Right.

Andrew Huberman 48:40 Right.

Tim Ferriss 48:41 For just speed of vasodilation, particularly for injury recovery, I think it's incredibly helpful. For mood regulation, certainly that's the case. And cold water for mood regulation or the treatment of, say, depression or as a preemptive...... intervention to avoid or mitigate depression is old. Used to be prescribed for melancholy, and people like the van Goghs of the world would be prescribed cold baths. So that was something I was like, "Well, let's take a look at some of the old history, read about that, and then look into PubMed and so on to see what might be supported." So the cold, I'm still using. I've become increasingly interested, this was not in The 4-Hour Body, but whole body hyperthermia often excluding the head for depression, which I, I know there's some, some research. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 49:34 Yeah, out of UCSF-

Tim Ferriss 49:35 Yeah, exactly.

Andrew Huberman 49:35 ... right now.

Tim Ferriss 49:36 Yeah, there's-

Andrew Huberman 49:36 They have really interesting studies. Too early to report, I'm not involved in these, but I think these are really important-

Tim Ferriss 49:42 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:42 ... studies because for all the people saying, "Oh, well, you know, it, it's ice bath stuff, you know, it, metabolism this, metabolism that," well, one thing that's very clear is long lasting, very significant increase in the catecholamines, dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine. Um, not a replacement perhaps for antidepressant medication, but as you said-

Tim Ferriss 50:00 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 50:00 ... to, to move the needle toward antidepressant states-

Tim Ferriss 50:03 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 50:03 Um, that's the cocktail, and, um, heat as well.

Tim Ferriss 50:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 50:07 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 50:08 And the hyperthermia, especially the way it is formatted right now with some of the research is, is very early stages. There's going to be less adherence. It's not as readily available as say a cold shower or cold bath. So I do think about the practical implications of that. But right now it's, it's very interesting. Slow carb diet, still use it all the time. It is not my default 24/7 as it used to be. So maybe I'm just getting older and more self-indulgent, but if I find myself going off the rails a bit and I'm like, "Okay, I'm getting closer to muffin top here, let's stage an intervention," then I will go immediately back to slow carb diet. And within, within a matter of weeks, uh, it, it's, it's pretty easily corrected. And-

Andrew Huberman 50:46 Just a cue for people, I know that, um, you know, that slow carb diet r- um, achieved great prominence. In fact, it, wasn't it featured on, uh, or mentioned in an episode of Orange Is the New Black?

Tim Ferriss 50:56 I think it might have been.

Andrew Huberman 50:57 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 50:57 It's made-

Andrew Huberman 50:58 That's-

Tim Ferriss 50:58 ... it's made appearances on a handful of shows. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 51:00 Great. I realize that I've been referring to the slow carb diet several times throughout this discussion. So for those that aren't familiar with the slow carb diet, I know they can go look up what that is.

Tim Ferriss 51:10 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 51:10 But so that we can keep them here, uh-

Tim Ferriss 51:12 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 51:12 ... for the rest of this discussion and not have to send them out and back, uh, just yet, um, could you give us just a brief top contour of what the slow carb diet is?

Tim Ferriss 51:20 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 51:21 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 51:21 And so slow carb diet is intended to be a simple, easy to adhere to diet for people who have perhaps failed other diets that allows you to recompose your body, so improve muscle mass, decrease body fat percentage. And the rules are really simple, and that's part of what makes it work. It's not ideal for every sport and every circumstance, but broadly speaking, it works for a lot of people who've had trouble with dieting in the past. So rule number one, don't drink calories. That's it. Very simple. So black coffee, unsweetened tea, great. Juice, out. Anything with calories, out. You could add a little bit of heavy cream to your coffee, let's say. Uh, but that's, that's also bending the rules in a way that I don't like. So in the beginning it's like follow the rules so you can break them later. So in the beginning, let's just say you can't drink calories. Number two, don't eat anything white. Sounds pretty basic, right? Just don't eat anything that is the color of white or that could be white. Basically that means you're going to be avoiding starches and, uh, things that are, are similar to starches.

Andrew Huberman 52:29 That includes things like oatmeal that are-

Tim Ferriss 52:31 That includes things like oatmeal.

Andrew Huberman 52:32 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 52:32 So roughly speaking, just avoiding things that are white or that could be white will get you pretty far. And yes, there are exceptions. Like cauliflower, fine, you can have cauliflower. But again, don't get fancy, right? It's, it's very easy to outsmart yourself when it comes to behavioral change. Keep it simple. So for at least two weeks, forget about the exceptions, right? (laughs) Don't drink calories. Don't eat anything white. And then eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. Okay. We got that. And then there are a few buckets you can choose from, right? So you have vegetables, beans and lentils, uh, and then some type of protein. So you're going to come up with meals that you can follow without deviating for a period of one or two weeks. Just come up with the same meals. And that's gonna sound boring, yes, but guess what? You do it already. You just might not realize it. And the, the lentils and the beans specifically as a pre-req, we can get into some of the reasons, but add a lot of fiber and also inhibit appetite, right? So that's actually a very important component of these meals. And there may be a handful of other rules, but those are the basics. And then the redemption is take one day off per week and just go fucking crazy. That's cheat day. There are some epic cheat days out there. Some I've captured for myself. And anything goes. When I say anything, I do mean anything. So if you want to consume multiple pizzas, pints of ice cream, whatever, indulge. Uh, I left one out. No fruit during the week. So avoid fruit, avoid fructose. So, you know, agave nectar. Anything that is sort of hidden sugar, avoid all that. Uh, so no added sweeteners obviously, but avoid, avoid fruit and fructose. And again, it's not gonna kill you. Guess what? If you're from (laughs) European ancestry, your ancestor did, did not have like blueberries in the middle of winter generally speaking, right? (laughs) So-

Andrew Huberman 54:39 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 54:39 ... you'll, you'll be fine for a few weeks. Uh, and then there's that cheat day, and cheat day anything goes. The amount of damage you can do on cheat day is pretty limited. And there are ways you can mitigate that. There's a whole chapter called Damage Control in The 4-Hour Body. But focusing just on that diet and having one day off where you know you can do anything means when you are controlling yourself for those six days of the week...You're not giving up your favorite foods forever. You can even keep a list of all the things you want to eat on cheat day, and then you have free license to eat on cheat day. And, uh, that provides you with a release valve so that you can build in the cheating, as opposed to having it occur as a failure point. And there are a handful of other things there. If you have domino foods in the house, for instance, (laughs) if you eat a lot of almonds or mixed nuts, and you're just going to sit there compulsively eating them while you're sitting at your laptop, don't have what I call domino foods in the house, which are going to really create some portion control issues. But broadly speaking, don't drink calories, don't eat things that are white, take from three categories and build your meals out, and those are the meals that you follow. Do not eat fruit or fructose, and then cheat one day a week. And Saturday's a nice day for cheat day for most folks. And, uh, just to answer some questions people are gonna have, no, that doesn't mean 24 hours, so you can spread it out over two days. That will actually set you back. But the amount of fat that you can store in a handful of sittings over 24 hours, which w- legitimately is more like 12 to 18 hours, pretty limited. Uh, so that's the slow carb diet.

Andrew Huberman 56:20 Great. Thank you for that. I also want to ask, is it okay to take the day after cheat day and fast or do one meal that day? When I followed the slow carb diet, I benefited from it tremendously. I lost fat, gained muscle, tons of energy, sleeping great, uh, required less caffeine-

Tim Ferriss 56:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 56:40 ... all sorts of wonderful things, stable blood sugar. I felt so, so good. Um, really enjoyed the cheat days.

Tim Ferriss 56:45 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 56:45 I really, really enjoyed the cheat days.

Tim Ferriss 56:47 So fun.

Andrew Huberman 56:47 So much fun. Um, at some point, there's some gastric distress that comes from, you know, not regulating intake-

Tim Ferriss 56:52 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 56:53 ... um, which led me to not want to eat the next day.

Tim Ferriss 56:57 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 56:57 Um, so I tended to do the cheat days on Sunday in my case-

Tim Ferriss 57:01 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 57:01 ... um, and then I would fast most of Monday, just water, black coffee, tea-

Tim Ferriss 57:06 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 57:06 ... and then I might have a small meal in the evening, and then by Tuesday, I was back on the slow carb diet.

Tim Ferriss 57:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 57:11 Does that seem like a, um, an, uh, sort of a detrimental deviation from the, from the plan?

Tim Ferriss 57:18 I think that if that is what works for you, then that is what works for you. So this is, the S- this, the slow carb diet template for me is a starting point, and generally, I'll say, and I think this is from Picasso, right? It's like, "Learn the rules as an amateur, so you can break them as a professional."

Andrew Huberman 57:34 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 57:34 But it's like S- I recommend most people kind of stick with the format for a handful of weeks and measure the results, right? There, so there are guidelines for how to measure. The, the scale is a bit of a blunt instrument, so there are other ways, but if you're extremely overweight, you can just use the scale. And fasting, I think is fine, or just ratcheting back your caloric consumption significantly. Uh, and what happens over time for most people also is for the first, say, four weeks, on cheat day, you're gonna go completely insane. And, uh, I remember, I was doing something much stricter called the cyclical ketogenic diet, which is a whole separate thing. It's much more limiting in terms of what you can eat, but I was training for ultimately the nationals in Chinese kickboxing. This was happening in '99. So I was training super hard. I was following a cyclical ketogenic diet, which meant I could eat very few things, but I did have this one cheat day, and I would do a glycogen depletion workout beforehand, which is one of the things you can do to limit the damage on cheat day, do a glycogen depletion workout beforehand, and then I would just go crazy. I mean, I would drive to, like, Krispy Kreme, buy 12 donuts, and they would be gone by the time I got home. And it wasn't an hour away. It was, like, a 10-minute drive. Donuts would be gone, right? I would go to Safeway, and I would buy a bag of those fun-sized Snickers, and that would be just a S- tiny portion of my calories.

Andrew Huberman 59:03 All the sweet stuff for you, huh?

Tim Ferriss 59:04 It, a lot of sweet stuff. I also did the savory stuff. I mean, I had my favorites-

Andrew Huberman 59:08 Nothing was safe.

Tim Ferriss 59:09 ... pizza-

Andrew Huberman 59:09 Nothing was safe. (laughs)

Tim Ferriss 59:11 Nothing was safe. Nothing was safe. My, my paws got into everything. And then over time, because the next day you're gonna feel like you got hit by a, a diabetic dump truck, you start ratcheting back. And you're like, "Okay, maybe I don't need to do that. Maybe cheat day will just be two meals, or maybe cheat day will just be, like, the pastries in the morning with the coffee." And you start to regulate a bit, generally. You don't have to, but over time, you generally will. And I think after you've followed it to the T, just follow the commandments for, say, four to eight weeks, then you can certainly deviate. And I'm not saying if you're not hungry, don't eat. However, in many cases, people have, they have acclimated to not eating in the morning, and then they end up overeating later in the day. If you have that habit, right, if you're consuming 50% of your calories or more at dinner, and you want to lose body fat, I would say get some cottage cheese or something that will give you 30 grams easily in the morning. Worst case scenario, use a protein of some type. Just don't make it hypercaloric.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:21 You mean powdered protein, like...

Tim Ferriss 1:00:22 Could be powdered whey, powdered whey protein. Whole food is going to do a lot more.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:26 Mm-hmm. And no calorie counting, correct?

Tim Ferriss 1:00:29 No calorie counting. It tends to be self-limiting. When you're eating this much fiber and this much protein, it tends to be very self-limiting, what you'll want to consume and what you can consume.

Andrew Huberman 1:00:40 Yeah. Once again, I've had great experiences with slow carb diet, and um, I'm gonna go back on.

Tim Ferriss 1:00:46 Yeah, and nobody, and, uh, nobody needs to buy anything to figure it out. If you just search on tim.blog, slow carb diet, there, you'll get everything that you need to get started. No purchase necessary. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:00:59 Well, it works very, very well, I'll say that. And it's very straightforward to follow, and it does include the, the notorious, uh, cheat day, uh-

Tim Ferriss 1:01:06 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:06 ... in- infamous cheat day.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:07 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:08 Um, uh, and it can be done, um-... on a, on a very reasonable budget. And so if people want to, uh, learn more about that, they should go to Tim's blog on 4-Hour, uh, um, 4-Hour Body and, um, Slow Carb Diet. We'll provide a link.

Tim Ferriss 1:01:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:22 But it's, you know, I, I think it's worth highlighting again just how effective that is, you know?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:26 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:26 As you pointed out, thousands and thousands of people, um, using it to great success, some of whom were, um, quite obese. And, um-

Tim Ferriss 1:01:34 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:34 Yeah, well, any updates on those folks? Are they still keeping the weight off, yeah?

Tim Ferriss 1:01:37 I, I would like to do a follow-up. Uh, it's, I think with diets in general, there's a lot of reversion to the mean, you know, regression to the mean. So I would expect that, that some have kept it off and some have not. That would be true of, I think, every possible diet, especially for people who are overcoming behavioral inertia of having gained hundreds of pounds. But, uh, I'd like to do some follow-up. What was fun about the post I put together called How to Lose a Hundred Pounds on the Slow Carb Diet, we had... We profiled, say, four or five people, but there were dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens. And this was a very long time ago. So I would say that a long-term follow-up would be super interesting. And we did at one point track several thousand people through a platform at the time, I think it was coach.me, as they followed the slow carb diet for the first sort of four to 12 weeks. And that was fascinating 'cause I want the data, and I'm happy to be proven incorrect with any of my assumptions. I mean, I, I don't view that as a failure when... (laughs) I view that as a, as a huge net gain, and, uh, it has a very high adherence rate. So I, I pay attention to not just is something effective, does it get you the outcome you want? Not only is it efficient from a time and resource perspective, but how high is the adherence rate, right? So if you take a random sampling of a thousand people from the US across socioeconomic classes, et cetera, how many people, practically speaking, will be able to or willing to follow this for, say, an eight-week period of time or four-week period of time? And I try to optimize for the widest adherence, because I know the, the slow carb diet people come out, and they're like, "What? But what about intermittent fasting? What about this? And what about endurance athletes?" I'm like, "This is not for everybody in all cases." It just happens to be a good default diet with a high adherence rate. And like you said, it's very inexpensive. It can be followed very, very inexpensively. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 1:03:34 Could I,

Andrew Huberman 1:03:35 uh, j- sorry to interrupt you. One thing that I really like about it is that, um, many, uh, variants on caloric restriction, which is 'cause laws of thermodynamics definitely apply.

Tim Ferriss 1:03:46 Yeah, for sure.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:46 We're not, we're not trying to say they don't. Um, but one of the issues with a lot of things, including intermittent fasting, which I sort of do some variant of 'cause I'm not really hungry to eat until about 11:00, I like to train in the morning if I can, et cetera, is that they can sometimes prevent best performance in terms of especially resistance training, high-intensity resistance training. So very low carb diets, I've tried them.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:09 Um, even if you're paying attention to, you know, other ways to restock glycogen, it... Performance drops off. Whereas with slow carb diet, I feel like I can think, I can work, I can exercise, I can sleep. Like, everything just works well. But there's one thing in it that I wanted to raise, that I, when I heard this, I thought, "There's no way this is true," which was, uh, making sure that you get 30 or so grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:32 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:32 And I thought, "How can that be? Like, how can adding protein early in the day actually make a difference?" And it really did work. I was... I still track my numbers. So in terms of dropping body fat percentage, increasing muscle.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:43 It really does work. Now, whether or not that's simply because it's offsetting food intake that I would have, um, food that I would have taken in later in the day, I don't know.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:51 I mean, I don't, I'm not gonna make myself my own control experiment to the point that I drive myself crazy.

Tim Ferriss 1:04:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:56 But, um, it really does work-

Tim Ferriss 1:04:57 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:58 ... uh, quite well, um, to get past sticking points-

Tim Ferriss 1:05:00 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:00 ... to just get that 30 grams of protein early. So sort of violate the int- the, uh, um, time-restricted feeding component deliberately with some protein in the morning-

Tim Ferriss 1:05:08 Yep.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:08 ... then still train and do all the other things and, you know, carry on as usual. And it, it's just so, it seems so peculiar, like eating more and, and losing body fat.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:17 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:17 But it works.

Tim Ferriss 1:05:18 Yeah, it's counterintuitive, and a lot of approaches can work for a lot of different people, right? To state the obvious. But this particular aspect of the slow carb diet is helpful for, let's just say, the majority of the people in that thousand-person sample I was talking about, the hypothetical pull from different parts of, say, the US or anywhere, because it, it, it seems to help with a few things. First, there's just the thermic effect of food, and for protein, there's a greater thermic effect. You also have, and I think there's, there's decent... At the time, there was decent literature to support this, so I don't know if it's changed, that the protein intake along those lines has an appetite-suppressing effect. So the, the net daily calories consumed tends to be less when someone has a higher-protein meal earlier in the day. And last but not least, I will say one of the risks, and there are many people who execute well on this, but you have to be very meticulous, which is true of the ketogenic diet as well. So it, you can get yourself into a lot of trouble if you do it 60% right or 70% right. You really-

Andrew Huberman 1:06:27 Been there.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:28 Been there.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:28 You can get yourself in a-

Andrew Huberman 1:06:28 Been there, massive psoriasis. I mean, my scalp-

Tim Ferriss 1:06:31 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:31 ... you know, sloughing off when th-

Tim Ferriss 1:06:33 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:06:33 ... like, when I'm in ketosis, I'm going like, "What the hell is going on here?"

Tim Ferriss 1:06:36 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:36 Going back on some complex carbohydrates and it going away.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:40 Yeah, exactly. So-

Andrew Huberman 1:06:41 I mean, I don't need a, I don't need a randomized control trial to know I simply don't want to run that experiment again.

Tim Ferriss 1:06:44 Don't lose your scalp. Yeah, so in the case of, say, time-restricted feeding, some people who do intermittent fasting lose a lot of muscle mass, and there are multiple reasons for this. I, I think people should make use of relatively widely available tools like DEXA and so on to ensure that your composition is actually moving the way you think it's moving. Uh, make sure you standardize your hydration for that as well as time of day. Just pro tip. That's true for blood tests as well. But...

1:07:17 ... it seems to get net-net better effects than trying to teach people how to fast effectively, which you can do, and we could talk about fasting. That's something that was not included in The 4-Hour Body that were I to rewrite it today, I would include a section, and there was a bit in Tools of Titans to address that on more extended fasts. Let's just call it three to seven day fasts. Uh, so that's an area that's of, of great interest to me, as is ketosis and metabolic psychiatry à la Chris Palmer-

Andrew Huberman 1:07:47 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:47 ... who we both know.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:48 Incredible.

Tim Ferriss 1:07:49 Uh-

Andrew Huberman 1:07:49 I mean, what he's, what the awakening that he's, uh, created through his book and going on your podcast, my podcast, and others, and, and, you know, letting people be aware that changes in diet can impact mental health.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:03 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:03 So, I think in two, three years, it's gonna be a duh.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:07 And we're not just talking about the difference between, you know, um, slamming back horrible foods, uh, horrible for us foods versus eating really clean. I mean, really specific diet protocols to treat mental health.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:18 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:18 It's incredible.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:19 Yeah, super exciting.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:21 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:21 So that's, that's one of the things that I'm paying a lot of attention to right now. There are a handful in that realm within the, just say, the, the interplay of mind and body, since the car- cartesian duality and separation of those two makes no sense (laughs) from a biological standpoint. So, uh, that's, that's something that's certainly captured my attention. I paid a lot of attention to even as far back as early 2000s, uh, for mental health and just cognitive performance.

Tim Ferriss 1:08:48 I'd like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be assessed with a quality blood test. The problem with a lot of blood and DNA tests out there, however, is that they'll give you information about certain lipid markers or hormone markers, but no information about what to do with all of that data. InsideTracker makes it very easy to look at your levels of hormones, metabolic factors, lipids, et cetera, and then to assess what sorts of behavioral, nutritional, supplementation, or perhaps other interventions you might want to use in order to bring those numbers into the ranges that are optimal for your health. For this week only, the week of June 19th, 2023, InsideTracker is offering a buy one get one free on their ultimate plan. This is their best discount of the year. You can get this offer by going to inside tracker dot com slash huberman. Again, that's inside tracker dot com slash huberman.

Tim Ferriss 1:09:53 Thanks for, uh, revisiting some of The 4-Hour Body and Slow Carb Diet and elaborating on, um, some of the process that went into that. And I think, uh, creators of all kinds, thinkers of all kinds, and people who are interested in the contents of The 4-Hour Body are going to be, uh, very grateful for that information. I certainly am fascinated by your process. Um, one of the things that you mentioned along the lines of process was, you know, the power of places and where one happens to live. I think there's a, a essay by Paul Graham that talks about this. It's a little outdated. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:27 Um, you know, and it talks about the messages that you, um, the tacit messages of being in certain cities. I think it was, you know, like Boston, "You're not smart enough." Um...

Tim Ferriss 1:10:37 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:10:38 Uh, what was it? It was New York, uh, "You're not powerful enough." Uh...

Tim Ferriss 1:10:42 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:10:42 And not you, obviously. (laughs) I'm, uh, just thinking of, um, or, "You should be more powerful," is the message, like the tacit message. Um, Los Angeles, um, uh, "What you're, uh, what you're doing, people aren't paying attention, uh, paying enough attention to it." Something like that.

Tim Ferriss 1:10:55 Yeah, totally.

Andrew Huberman 1:10:55 Like, the tacit messages that, these are stereotypes about cities. Certainly, cities change. Um, the role of places is an interesting one. Like, y- you know, you mentioned, you know, small gathering, Kevin Kelly's house, quantified self, and I think for people who don't know people like that, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:11:11 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:11 Um, maybe we could get your thoughts on, you know, how would one think about where to live and, and maybe even curating their own gatherings-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:20 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:20 ... useful gatherings? Because it's not that, uh, I have to imagine it's not that you guys sat back and you're like, "I'm Tim Ferriss." And he's like, "I'm Kevin Kelly. Let's have a gathering so we can talk about it in a few years on a podcast."

Tim Ferriss 1:11:31 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:31 This stuff happens-

Tim Ferriss 1:11:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:33 ... that word, you know, it's a dangerous word, organically.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:35 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:36 Um, when people who have common interests decide to get together and talk and listen and brainstorm. And I'm yet to do that in a, you know, with good people and not have something really incredible come out of it. Not necessarily that day.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:52 Yup.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:52 But looking five years, looking back five years later and just going, "God, that was really worthwhile."

Tim Ferriss 1:11:57 Totally.

Andrew Huberman 1:11:57 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:11:59 A few thoughts in no particular order. I would say the first is, it depends a- my recommendations depend a lot on where you are in the arc of your career and life. If you are in full growth hyperdrive mode and you are trying to build both yourself and your capabilities in a very concentrated way where you're not necessarily focused on family, you maybe have fewer obligations, then if you're serious, I think many people should consider moving to an area of high density-

Andrew Huberman 1:12:35 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:12:35 ... for a period of time. It could be three months. It could be six months. Could be longer. But putting yourself in a New York or an LA or a San Francisco or a Chicago, or as new places develop, I'll, I'll give you one you might not expect, say an Ottawa, Canada, where Shopify is based and the presence and growth of Shopify has spawned an entire ecosystem of startups. So there may be options outside of the usual cast of characters. Pittsburgh and Duolingo, similar effect. So there are more options than people might recognize. But taking a journey and placing yourself...

1:13:20 ... in a place where you can be in a very active pinball machine, where you may interact serendipitously with many different people from many different worlds, I think is, is, is hard to overstate the value of. And my drive and my filtering function, let's just say, 'cause when I first got to the Bay Area, nobody cared about me. I was nobody. I was driving my mom's used minivan hand-me-down that had the seat stolen out of the back. It looked terrible.

Andrew Huberman 1:13:48 Were you in the, were you in the South Bay area?

Tim Ferriss 1:13:49 I was, I was working in San Jose. Yeah, uh-

Andrew Huberman 1:13:52 I mean, no disrespect to San Jose. I'm from the South Bay.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:13:55 But there's a, there's a bleakness to the South Bay.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:58 There is, there is-

Andrew Huberman 1:13:59 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:13:59 ... a little bit of bleakness.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:00 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:00 And then I lived across the street in this tiny apartment, lived across the street from the Jack in the Box in Mountain View. So it's not like I was strolling onto the big stage and just blowing people away.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:09 Oh, oh, I, I, I, I grew up-

Tim Ferriss 1:14:11 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:14:11 ... right near Mountain View.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:12 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:12 I'm very familiar.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:13 I pro- probably skated the curbs at that Jack in the Box.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:15 Probably did, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:16 Did you train at the Gold's Gym in, off Ring Stort?

Tim Ferriss 1:14:18 I did, actually.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:19 Amazing.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:19 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:19 That was a great gym.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:20 That was a great gym.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:21 That was a great gym. I don't think it's still there though.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:22 I would go there super late before my writing sessions.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:25 Okay.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:25 And it had the benefit of being open, really, really late.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:28 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:28 And wow, Ring Store, I haven't thought about that in a long time. So the, the point is, I also started where a lot of people are starting.

Andrew Huberman 1:14:36 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:14:37 And what did I do? I put myself in a high density environment. Next, what did I do, knowing no one? I started to volunteer at events where they had interesting speakers and interesting people coming to hear those speakers. So I put myself in Silicon Valley, and then I began volunteering for groups like SVASE. I don't know if it exists anymore, the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs, I think it was. TIH, The Indus Entrepreneur, which is a very sort of Indian or Indian American focused organization that does a lot in the realm of startups. And I would carry water. I would take out garbage. I would check name badges. I would check people in. Nothing was too low for me. And I'll give you guys a tip that will be obvious to some, but non-obvious to many. When you are volunteering, a lot of folks who volunteer do the absolute bare minimum because they're not getting paid. This is not gonna get you noticed. But it sets a very low bar so that if you volunteer at these events and someone's dropping the ball or there's something happening that needs fixing and you just proactively do it, the producers of these events will notice you. And this is what happened over time, over a few months, and then I got invited to join in on meetings that were planning future events. And I eventually got to the point where I was recruiting speakers and able to set the agenda for an entire main event. And then that's how I got to know, say, Jack Canfield, who is the co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul and many others, who introduced me to my book agent many, many, many, many years later-

Andrew Huberman 1:16:17 Hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:18 ... Jack Canfield. But I was a nobody then. You have to play the long game, but you can be methodical in how you play that. And that is one approach, just as an example, for how to build your network, which snowballs over time. Don't hump every VIP's leg within 10 minutes of meeting them. Play it cool (laughs) you know?

Andrew Huberman 1:16:40 And the la- and the gatherings where that person is, uh, has a lot of demands on them i- is, the last place you wanna do that, right?

Tim Ferriss 1:16:47 Yeah. The way you're gonna make yourself memorable-

Andrew Huberman 1:16:48 No saliency to that.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:49 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:16:49 Right.

Tim Ferriss 1:16:49 The way you're gonna make yourself memorable with people like that is to be very professional, always on time, predict what they're going to need or problems they'll run into beforehand and address them before they even think of them, and be easy to deal with. And people like that, high performers, notice these things. They will make note of it.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:09 Yeah, the being easy to work with is something that, um, I used to tell my graduate students and post-docs. I mean, it, th- because the opposite of that, nobody wants.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:19 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:20 Right? Nobody wants that.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:21 You know?

Tim Ferriss 1:17:21 Especially in the beginning. Like, later-

Andrew Huberman 1:17:22 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:22 Okay, great, you're Steve Jobs. You wanna be difficult here and there or a lot. No problem.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:27 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:27 Right?

Andrew Huberman 1:17:28 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:17:28 But in the beginning, that can be a real liability. You can make up for that if you're the best in the world, but in the very beginning, you probably won't be. Uh, so try to stack the deck in your favor. Volunteering is a shortcut, and that would be one way of doing it. Another now, especially given the virtual communities that exist, so you have subreddits, you have online communities, you have Twitter groups, you have Clubhouse, you've got a million different options, which can be overwhelming.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:55 Is Clubhouse still going?

Tim Ferriss 1:17:56 Maybe not. I have no idea.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:57 Oh, no, I don't know. I'm not saying-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:58 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:17:58 ... it's gone, I just-

Tim Ferriss 1:17:59 But-

Andrew Huberman 1:17:59 I remember during the pandemic, there were some Clubhouse gatherings. I hopped on there and, but I've sort of forgotten to, to get on there.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:04 Maybe not.

Andrew Huberman 1:18:05 Yeah.

Tim Ferriss 1:18:05 The, the platform affinity is really fickle, which is why I think, to the extent possible, if you wanna build a world-class, and I use that term very deliberately, network in record time, just to give you a nice headline, I would say focus on the uncrowded channel, which is in person. It's out of fashion. It's out of vogue. Going to a conference and actually interacting with humans in the hallway, approaching panelists, this is another thing that I did. I'll give a, I'll give another tip. So very early on, I would go to conferences. Nobody cared who I was. Nobody knew who I was. Fine. And I would study the panels. Let's say I'm going to a big event like South by Southwest, and I would... This is what I did in 2007, which was just prior to the first book coming out. And I would go to these various in-person events. I was focused mostly on events that had, uh, the, the thematic focus of blogs. We can come back to that. But blogs were what podcasts were a few years ago, right? They drove incredible traffic, but they were undervalued by mainstream media, undervalued by mainstream publishers, et cetera, which meant there was an arbitrage opportunity in a way. And I would pick, say, a handful of...... panels with topics I thought were super interesting, and then the panel would end, and what would happen? The panelists would get rushed by various folks, because many of them were well-known. Who was not getting rushed? The moderator. I would go straight to the moderator, and I would talk to the moderator, I would thank them for the panel, I would be very genuine, none of it was made up, and talk to them for a bit. They would generally ask why I was there, what I was interested in, I would mention whatever that happened to be. In this case it was, "I'm finishing my first book," or, "I have my first book coming out soon. I'm here to hopefully meet people, uh, who are involved with A, B, or C." And then if we hit it off, which was not true every time, but if it seemed to be going well, I would say, "Is, I don't know anyone here. I'm really sort of orphaned here, making my way through, uh, this entire event. Is there anyone else here you think I would get along with, who maybe I could buy a drink or a coffee?" And the vast majority of the time they'd be like, "Oh, yeah, you should meet so-and-so." And then I'd get the introduction, and then I would meet that person. I would have a genuine interaction with that person, and if it made sense, if things were going well, I'd do the same thing.

Andrew Huberman 1:20:31 Mm-hmm.

Tim Ferriss 1:20:32 "Is there anybody else here who you think I